Nocturne, a protocol designed to enable private accounts on public blockchains, has recently secured a significant amount of funding from key players in the Ethereum ecosystem. The protocol is set to launch on the mainnet in the near future after successfully completing a seed funding round that raised $6 million.
The funding round was co-led by Bain Capital Crypto and Polychain Capital, with participation from Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and other members of the Ethereum community. Notable investors such as Bankless Ventures, HackVC, and Robot Ventures also contributed to the funding, according to a press release by Nocturne.
The funds raised will be utilized to accelerate the development of Nocturne’s protocol and its implementation across various ecosystems. Additionally, the funding will support the company’s legal work in an ever-evolving regulatory environment. Nocturne had previously raised $4.6 million in funding.
Advancing Usability of Public Blockchains
Nocturne Labs, the blockchain technology company behind Nocturne, aims to address critical privacy and user experience challenges within the Ethereum ecosystem. With Nocturne, users can execute transactions with built-in privacy through private accounts, which represents a significant step forward in improving the usability of public blockchains.
Luke Tchang, the CEO and co-founder of Nocturne, emphasized the company’s plans to launch on the mainnet very soon. However, the initial launch will not take place in the United States due to regulatory considerations. According to a spokesperson, the launch will offer a compliant and non-custodial privacy option to retail users, with the ability to integrate with wallets, payment companies, and other strategic partners.
Enabling Private Accounts on Public Blockchains
By combining stealth addresses, zero-knowledge proofs, and account abstraction, Nocturne’s protocol enables private accounts on public blockchains. These private accounts function similarly to typical Ethereum accounts but come with built-in asset privacy.
Account abstraction is a paradigm that transfers the authentication logic for spending assets from a single signature check of the user’s private key to arbitrary logic held in a smart contract. Nocturne operates as an account abstraction protocol where assets from multiple users are pooled together for anonymity, and ownership is represented by stealth addresses. Through this approach, users can deposit funds into Nocturne and later prove ownership of those assets in zero-knowledge for various anonymous contract interactions or confidential payments.
Nocturne offers several use cases, including a private vault interface, a private payments backend, and a private smart contract wallet. The private vault interface allows users to securely store and earn yield on idle assets, while the private payments backend enables shielded payroll for on-chain organizations. The private smart contract wallet, on the other hand, integrates Nocturne’s wallet software development kit (SDK) into existing wallet clients to provide a familiar wallet experience with built-in asset privacy.
“Nocturne aims to close the privacy gap by bringing privacy to existing applications and assets while striving for feature parity as a minimum requirement.” – Alex Evans, Partner at Bain Capital Crypto
